Morgan, Philip D., and Sean Hawkins (eds), Black Experience and the Empire, Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (Oxford, 2006; online edn, Oxford Academic, 3 Oct. 2011), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290673.001.0001

This work explores the lives of people of sub-Saharan Africa and their descendants, how they were shaped by empire, and how they in turn influenced the empire in everything from material goods to cultural style. The black experience varied greatly across space and over time. Accordingly, thirteen substantive essays and a scene-setting introduction range from West Africa in the sixteenth century, through the history of the slave trade and slavery down to the 1830s, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century participation of blacks in the empire as workers, soldiers, members of colonial elites, intellectuals, athletes, and musicians. No people were more uprooted and dislocated; or travelled more within the empire; or created more of a trans-imperial culture. In the crucible of the British empire, blacks invented cultural mixes that were precursors to our modern selves — hybrid, fluid, ambiguous, and constantly in motion.

Source: Book abstract from academic.oup.com

Musisi, Nakanyike B. “A Personal Journey into Custom, Identity, Power, and Politics: Researching and Writing the Life and Times of Buganda's Queen Mother Irene Drusilla Namaganda (1896–1957).” History in Africa 23 (1996): 369–85. doi:10.2307/3171949.

The popularity of African novels lies in their ability to convey to the reader how a society might have functioned with or without a state. Since most often a novelist tries to recreate a historical moment, a novel becomes a pedagogical tool of what Klein has called a “reasonable representation of what society may have been like.” In the most popularly utilized novels, an individual is cast at the center of the unfolding story. Most often, the African novel concerns itself with the impact of colonialism and the transition from traditional to contemporary African realities. This is frequently done with the aim of conveying to the reader the processes of adjustment and the pros and cons of this adjustment.

Source: Extract from article.

Allman, Jean Marie, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi. Women in African Colonial Histories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.

How did African women negotiate the complex political, economic, and social forces of colonialism in their daily lives? How did they make meaningful lives for themselves in a world that challenged fundamental notions of work, sexuality, marriage, motherhood, and family? By considering the lives of ordinary African women? farmers, queen mothers, midwives, urban dwellers, migrants, and political leaders?in the context of particular colonial conditions at specific places and times, Women in African Colonial Histories challenges the notion of a homogeneous "African women's experience." While recognizing the inherent violence and brutality of the colonial encounter, the essays in this lively volume show that African women were not simply the hapless victims of European political rule. Innovative use of primary sources, including life histories, oral narratives, court cases, newspapers, colonial archives, and physical evidence, attests that African women's experiences defy static representation. Readers at all levels will find this an important contribution to ongoing debates in African women's history and African colonial history.

Source: Book Description on Books.google.ca

Musisi, Nakanyike B. “Morality as Identity: The Missionary Moral Agenda in Buganda,1877-1945.” Journal of Religious History 23, no. 1 (1999): 51–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9809.00073.

This article advances three arguments. First, that prior to European intrusion in the mid-1800s, “Buganda” and “Mugandaness” were continually contested ideologies whose meanings were not given but discursively constructed and reconstructed in conditions of historical specificity. Second, that “Baganda” as an identity, was first constructed in the early travellers’ journals. Later on missionaries and Buganda’s leading chiefs appropriated the construct “Buganda” and actively participated in its elaboration and refinement as it was later to be used and popularized in the twentieth century. Third, that Buganda identity was constructed through the active silencing of the disruptive relations of ethnicity, of gender, and of class. In the celebration of an ethnic identity, inequalities and oppression were glossed over. Out of a confrontation with the “other,” Buganda identity was carefully and powerfully articulated by the Christian middle-class men who, from 1900, dominated the newly created ruling council of Buganda, called the Lukiiko.

Source: Excerpt from article's abstract

Musisi, Nakanyike. “GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN AFRICAN HISTORY: A PERSONAL REFLECTION.” Journal of African History 55, no. 3 (2014): 303–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853714000589.

This piece considers the subfields of African gender and sexuality history, from the perspective of an unusual career path that has moved between higher education and activist work in Canada and Uganda, and included policy and public service work in the latter. Over the past few decades, African women's history has shifted from the margins of African historiography to the mainstream; scholars have subjected a wide range of topics to insightful gender analysis; and increasingly sophisticated studies of sexuality have emerged. This piece surveys these important developments and how they have played out in the classroom in relation to students’ shifting political and social sensibilities. It argues that, moving forward, scholars should devote more attention to the precolonial history of sexuality and develop creative methodologies for reconstructing that history, especially through engaging historical demography.

Source: Article Abstract

Bareebe, Gerald, and Moses Khisa. “Rwanda-Uganda Relations: Elites’ Attitudes and Perceptions in Interstate Relations.” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, May 14, 2023, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/14662043.2023.2200598.

Rwanda and Uganda have had strained relations, oscillating between warm, lukewarm, hostile and outright war. Since the biggest falling out during the Second Congo War (1998–2003), both governments have variously accused each  other  of  wrongdoing,  including  allegations  of  supporting  rebel activities, covert counterintelligence operations and espionage. The most recent escalation in frosty relations saw the closure of Katuna border post. Because the respective ruling parties–the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the National Resistance Movement–at a minimum have shared ideological and historical origins, we would expect relations to be strong and constructive not hostile or tenuous. Yet, it is precisely the shared history and social ties among the politico-military and intelligence elites that shape the suspicion, mistrust and hostility that feed into official policies. This article analyses how shared ideological and historical origins, social relations and kindred ties inform individual attitudes and perceptions of key elites toward each other’s government.

Source: Article's abstract.